


wherever I have gone (the blues are all the same)

by moorglade



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Episode: s02e08 Conversion, Hurt/Comfort, Iratus-mutated Sheppard, OT4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 14:16:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5747533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moorglade/pseuds/moorglade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John used to be human once.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wherever I have gone (the blues are all the same)

John used to be human once. 

He doesn’t think he liked it very much. 

-

When he thinks slowly back (he does everything slowly, these days) he remembers a world where barely anything had a smell, or any taste on the air. He remembers continual touches against his too-thin skin. He remembers doing, rushing from one place to another; always _doing_. 

He doesn’t do very much any more. He lays under his sunlamp, he feeds, and he sleeps. He hides in the place of cool darkness. He soaks in the place where there is water. He defends his territory, and he protects his nestmates. 

All three of John’s nestmates are human; fragile, with thin skins and no claws, and no frills or crests to signal their moods. John isn’t quite sure why he doesn’t share a nest with others of his own kind. 

(The three of them smell like home.) 

-

Teyla, the smallest, smells of dried plants. She helped John shed his skin when the time came, patiently working her hands over the old dull skin as he lay in the water, until the shining new scales beneath were revealed. She sings to John sometimes, when he is hungry or angry or agitated. She sings; and gradually John’s spines flatten down, and his crest drops, until he is simply laying there, listening. 

(Sometimes she cries. John puts his head in her lap and leans into her, trying to offer what comfort he can. He never knew how to find the right words before, and now he barely has any words left at all.) 

-

Ronon, the largest, smells of animal skins. He helps John defend his territory, patrolling it with him each day, while John marks it with his scent and makes sure there is nothing which could threaten his nestmates. Ronon can’t climb as John can, and he can’t jump very far, or very high. But he understands that every part of John’s territory needs defending, even the places where he cannot accompany John. And he makes threatening noises at the other humans if they stray too close to the boundaries. 

The other humans don’t understand that John’s territory and his nestmates are _his_. Some of them don’t know enough to back away when John raises his crest in challenge, or when he displays his spines. Some of them don’t understand even when he hisses, even when he shows his claws. He had to bite some of them before they understood. 

(He was only mildly venomous. Ronon makes noises at the other humans now until they go away, and John hears _this territory is taken, and my nestmate is too strong for you to take it from him_.) 

-

Rodney, John’s third nestmate, smells of rocks and ground. He made John’s sunlamp, which John loves better than any other place in his territory. When he first stopped being human he was cold all the time, and all he did was to lie on the ground, breathing. But then Rodney made him a sunlamp, and John could bask until he was warm down to the tips of his claws. He’d raised his crest then for the first time; not as a challenge, but with pleasure he didn’t know how else to show. 

(Rodney had cried for a bit, and then he’d stroked the good spots on John’s back between his spines, until John fell asleep with his head in Rodney’s lap.) 

-

At night, John sniffs their nest thoroughly before he allows his nestmates near. They are his to protect, and there of all places he needs to make sure there is no danger. Once he is satisfied that he can smell no threats he lets them come close and lays down with them, surrounded by warm bodies with no scales and soft, soft hair. 

(It feels like home used to.) 

-

When he wakes he is always cold. But Rodney turns on his sunlamp, and Teyla and Ronon help him out of their nest, so that John can creep slowly under its warmth. And then he basks, while his nestmates cover their thin skins with other skins which are still not scales, until Ronon brings him something to feed on. 

Under the sunlamp, its warmth quickening his thoughts as well as his blood, John remembers that he too used to be human, once. He listens to the noises his nestmates make to each other and to him, and he tries, tries, tries to understand. 

( _You have to keep fighting, you hear me?_ Ronon says. _Just a little longer, John; Carson says he is so close now to a cure_ , Teyla says. _Don’t you **dare** give up on us_ , Rodney says. And sometimes, just sometimes, the tiny part of him that is still John Sheppard manages to make a noise that is almost like _yeah_.) 


End file.
